Drought
by Aegle
Summary: Remus and Tonks get stoned while Sirius and Dung muck about with antique furniture in the House of Black. Oneshot. Rated for use of illicit substances and foul language.


_Author's Note: _If you find this situation highly unlikely, don't worry. So do I. A massive thank-you to my beta, Spoons Are For Marmalade Skies, who continues to not take crap and will call me out without hesitation.

* * *

**Drought**

"Not joining the party, I take it."

He's been standing in the same spot, squinting out into the back garden for the past twenty minutes. Even with the windows opened the old house is stiflingly hot—never mind that it's only May, and the summer has yet to hit its stride. He can taste salt on his upper lip and the back of his shirt clings to the shallow cavern between his shoulders. When he glances back to the bedroom he sees her leaning against the doorframe, hair sticking in wild clumps to her temples.

"Party?"

Tonks smiles and folds her arms. Two dark patches stain the armpits of her tee shirt.

"Sirius and Dung have taken to afternoon drinking contests." She lets out a breath. "They were making the wingchairs battle each other when I got here."

"Going to end in a lot of broken glass and a trip to St. Mungo's."

"Oh, well yeah, but if there's bloodshed it's an excuse to get rid of that crap rug in the lounge." There's a high-pitched whine as the door closes, and she adds, "I figure Dung knows most of the hospital staff by now. Be a bit like seeing old friends."

He smiles, and his eyes roam once more over the wilting hyacinths below and the patches of yellowed grass springing up between the weeds and soil. Everything is dry here, he thinks, except his clothing and the liquor cabinets.

When he turns he has to steady himself by grabbing the desk corner. His legs are stiff from the last transformation and he's been hobbling around in his room for the better part of two days. Her eyes don't glance away.

He can't figure out which is worse—that he's clutching furniture to stay upright or that she's standing there watching him. She makes no comment, instead reaching around to her back pocket and pulling out a slightly wadded up plastic bag. He doesn't have time to react, because she's tossing it to him, and somehow he manages to catch it without looking like an idiot.

"Figured you could get some use out of that."

He sits down on top of the desk, regarding her with mock severity.

"Aren't you supposed to be upholding the law?"

"You're one to talk. I've had many a late night conversation with our house-bound friend." She's crossed the sprawling network of papers on his floor, stepping around the ashtray with all of its dead stubs and moving a small pile of books from the settee to take residence in their place. "My perception of you is completely blown."

"I'm a reformed man."

"Like hell you are." Tonks swipes at the bits of hair that have glued themselves to her skin, propping her head against the wall. "Christ it's hot. How do you stay up here all day?"

"Well, it's this or listening to Dung's version of 'Hurry Up, Harry' and I'd rather just live with the body odor." He cups his hands to light a cigarette and then makes his way over to the stack of records on the floor, flipping through them with the cigarette still between his lips. Tonks is sitting relaxed on the settee watching with what he supposes is amusement, but she makes as though to stand when he climbs up from his squatting position and mumbles a sharp and garbled _fuck _at the resulting pain.

"All right?"

"Fine."

She ends it there, and he's thankful.

He drops the needle into place and waits for the scratchy sounds of harmonicas and guitars to come warbling from the record player. When he looks at her again he sees she's taken her shoes off, flexing her toes and frowning at them like they haven't met her stringent inspection.

Remus brings out the bag, breathing smoke through his nostrils and running a thumb over the flimsy plastic. He glances at Tonks. Below them Dung has started up a one-man chorus of tavern songs and his voice, off-key and muted by layers of wood and carpeting, seeps up from the library.

--

"This is what Dumbledore had in mind when he took us on."

"Who do you think I got the rolling papers from?"

--

He lights his twentieth cigarette of the day—tenth, twentieth, it could be either really—and the match sends a sulfur smell floating around them. He waves it out, dropping it into the ashtray.

"_Everything necessary to the Modern Man_," he murmurs, and accepts the slice of fruit she's holding out to him. He motions flippantly to himself with the cigarette. "Except a car. So I'm out on that one."

Tonks bites into a bit of orange and some of the juice dribbles down her chin.

Remus smiles, just for a second. "I'm rambling."

"It's alright."

"You should be running for the door. I won't bear grudges."

"I'm fine here."

"You're just lazy."

She's been sitting Indian-style next to him on the floor, listening with a slow, contented smile on her face. When she laughs it's loud and course; her eyes screw shut and her body shakes.

"Piss off."

"No, I'm lazy too. I can't move." He slumps against the worn-out settee, closing his eyes and letting his cigarette burn down to the filter.

--

"She's crazy, my mum," she tells him after a long drag. She's rolled her jeans up to her knees. She looks like she's going to wade into the sea. "I think I might be too."

Her knees are pulled up to her chest and to him she's extremely small—a sweaty girl with a sharply pointed chin and little red elbows that are jutting out on either side of her legs, where they're wrapped around them as though to keep her from scrambling away. He stares as she presses her lips together and relaxes them, and when she finally notices his gaze she smiles under the weight of it, glances away, and fixates briefly on the wall sconces and the rolled-up cuffs of her jeans.

Her shoulders jerk up in a shrug and she states, "I was the poster child for St. Mungo's growing up." Tonks nods to herself and moves to run her hands over both kneecaps, laughing quietly. There's not just a little embarrassment beneath it.

"My parents thought I had dyspraxia or some rubbish at first." The corners of her mouth twitch and her head lolls over to look at him. "Turns out I'm just incredibly awkward."

The joint she's holding is badly rolled. Far too loose because she'd been talking as she'd tucked the paper into itself on his desk. It bobs between her fingers when she motions to the air.

"She was always doing that. Thinking I had conditions, illnesses. She was convinced that I'd get myself killed somehow. Really believed it."

Tonks looks up at the iron leaf chandelier hanging overhead and he feels relieved, because there's no distance here, not with her sitting nearly up against him and with hardly enough room to breathe. She seems oblivious, because she continues on, and her words become increasingly clipped and frantic.

"I'm not afraid of dying. Not really. I mean, it happens right? Everyone dies. You can't predict it, or avoid it, or fucking whine about it because sooner or later it just hits you, and next thing someone's playing shitty songs at your funeral and talking about what a noble person you were and how you could bake a fantastic cherry torte. It's all just bullshit."

Tonks glances over at him quickly and once again her face is ridiculously close to his.

"What?" she asks. The edge of her mouth turns up in a curious smile.

"Nothing."

"Nothing? Run out of clever observations?"

"You rolled that too loosely."

"What?"

He plucks the joint from her fingers and she furrows her brows.

"Yeah, well, you're the expert then aren't you?"

"I am an expert at absolutely fuck-all. In fact, I think I'd like that on my gravestone. 'Remus Lupin: unemployed werewolf and expert at absolutely fuck-all. Makes a decent cherry torte'."

"Shut up."

"And they'd put me in a box that wasn't big enough, so I'd have my arm sticking out. Feet, maybe."

"I could cut them off, if you like. If I don't hate you by then."

"Even if you did I imagine it'd be rather cathartic."

She gives him a easy grin, knocking her knee against his. "Let's hope for luck then, eh? And by luck I mean creative problem solving. Umbridge gets taken out by a disgruntled chain-smoker with questionable baking skills and the Ministry's all the better for it."

"Careful. We'll be tried for conspiracy." He glances out the window. The sun is casting shadows across the floor, contorting their figures into long-legged things that stretch out over the wood paneling. "Still," he says, looking back to her, "one less Diana Moon Glampers, I suppose."

"Ugh. Literature." She leans her head against his shoulder and he nearly starts coughing on the smoke he's just inhaled.

"I don't really read any of these, you know. I just keep them because they look pretty."

Her laughter vibrates against him, low and soft. He could put his arm around her—he doesn't think she'd mind, but he stops himself and clears his throat.

"Don't go to sleep on me. I'll set you out in the hallway. Make you fend for yourself."

"You wouldn't."

"I'm very cruel."

"No."

--

Her hands shouldn't be this delicate. Callused—yes, a bit—but small and fine and completely engulfed by his own when he captures her fingers with his. If he weren't fully stoned he'd think more of the flush that appears on her cheeks like a stain. She sucks in a quiet breath, watching him bring her hand close to his face and away again, trying to focus and failing. Her fingers are still sticky with nectar.

"It's quiet," she tells him.

Sweat slips down past his ear and disappears into his cotton shirt. The lack of air flow in the room is heightening the buzzing, muddy feeling in his head.

"What?"

"Downstairs."

"Oh." He releases her hand. "Good. Perhaps they've killed each other."

Her cheek is against the coarse edge of the settee and he's focused on the rays of light refracting in a hanging crystal in the open window. The sound of her inhalations fuse together with the gentle rocking of the ornament, as though it's swinging in tune, expanding as her lungs expand. His lips are dry and he runs his tongue over the bottom one, tasting nicotine and weed.

"I like this song," she murmurs. He can feel her breath against his ear. "What is it?"

"Illinois Blues."

"Mm."

He's concentrating on remaining perfectly still. She's got her head resting so close to his, her arm pressed up against him. He thinks that her fingers might be skimming over his wrist, but it could be an accident, or a hallucination, and the music playing is extremely loud and doesn't make any sense.

"Remus?" she asks, and he has to look at her. The loose curls she's worn her hair in are sticking damply to her forehead and cheeks. He feels like he's losing his mind, reaching over and running his fingertips over her jaw line, brushing them away and staring at his own hand, almost expecting it to melt into her flushed skin. She should be pulling away or snorting and telling him to fuck off, but she's breathing in and out very slowly, and looking back at him with dilated eyes.

He lets his thumb graze over her eyelid. Her nostrils flare. It's a stupid thing he's doing, he tells himself as he leans down and touches his dry lips to her cheek, just below her eye. He smells her shampoo and the orange she'd been eating, and some time after—he doesn't know how long, he can't count the seconds between—he's kissing her.

--

"Tonks left."

Sirius is slouched down in a high-backed armchair, and it's making his head fall forward like a deranged marionette. He looks blearily past Remus in to the hall, stretching out his long legs and tilting his head to one side. "Think she'll be back?"

"I haven't a clue. What happened to Dung?"

"Sleeping, I reckon. Buggered off upstairs, didn't he? Ate all the jam." He motions to an empty jar lying on the floor, where preservatives are drying in sticky gobs to the carpeting.

"Well I suppose all we'll have to do is track the magenta vomit and we'll have our culprit." Remus rests one arm against the doorframe, hoping to regain his balance. He sways a little and Sirius smiles lopsidedly, slithering down lower in the chair and regarding him with unfocused grey eyes. His pale arms are clinging to the armrests, unused muscles slack.

"You look winded, Moony," he remarks.

"You caught me. I was deep into a callisthenic work-out." He wipes a hand across the back of his neck. "Why were you shouting?"

An expression of annoyance flickers across the other man's face, and he gestures gracelessly toward the ceiling. "Little shit stole my quills."

Remus rubs the bridge of his nose, trying to concentrate on the slurred words. The blood is rushing to his ears and he can still feel her hands sliding over his stomach. "Kreacher?"

"Yes, Kreacher. Always fucking _Kreacher. _He's probably up in the attic, little shit, shoving 'em up his own fuckin' arse."

Remus frowns, making his way gingerly across the drawing room. "That doesn't even make sense."

"Yeah…well." He waves him off without effort and his hand plops back onto the chair.

One of Dung's mud-caked boots is lying beside the varnished writing desk, and it would seem more bizarre were the room not in a state of complete chaos. Remus rights a salon chair with its legs sticking indignantly into the air, dusting it off and collapsing into it with a groan. Even from this distance he can smell the sweat and alcohol radiating from Sirius, who by now has progressed to staring out into space. Remus considers throwing Dung's discarded shoe at him.

"Why do you need quills, exactly?"

Sirius leans heavily to one side and for a few seconds Remus expects the armchair to tip over and spill its inhabitant onto the raspberry jam-covered floor. "For writing a letter."

"To whom?"

"Three guesses."

"Carole Bouquet?"

"He's funny, this one. Droll."

"If you're planning on writing Snape about the Occlumency lessons then it's a good thing Kreacher's nicked the quills."

"Right. 'Cause you did such a grand fucking job getting through his massive skull."

"He's not resuming the lessons. I tried. He refuses."

"You just don't know how to talk to him. You can't be all proper and polite." Sirius grunts. "'s like teaching dinner etiquette to a fucking chimpanzee."

He falls quiet afterward and Remus wonders if he's fallen asleep or passed out, but then he sticks his head back around the wing and asks with renewed interest, "Why did Tonks leave?"

Remus looks at him. "Because she hates you." He glances upward. "Or she hates me. Probably both actually."

Sirius smiles, exposing an entire set of teeth that haven't seen dental care in a decade. Somehow, he looks less stable than before. "No," he replies, "she likes you." There's a flicker of something that could be amusement or understanding behind his eyes and then he goes back to picking at the edge of the chair, chin resting on his bony chest.

Remus watches him, listening to the creaking upstairs of Dung moving around, no doubt shoving family heirlooms into his trousers, and the shallow, ragged sound of Sirius breathing. He thinks about her small hands seeking out places to touch and how she'd let him run his unsteady fingers over her collarbones just beneath the soft material of her shirt with its tall grey letters reading _Who Killed Bambi?_, the way she'd pressed delicate kisses against his neck, and the horrible speed with which they'd sprung apart when Sirius's voice had echoed in the upper floors of the house.


End file.
